|
I just wanted to go on record to say that retrofuturism owns. Alien Resurrection, of course, manages to gently caress that up (like everything it tries) by picking the lamest possible company to namedrop.
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 19:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 21:57 |
|
|
It seems silly to me, to discuss anachronisms like that in film because of course things are going to be that way... just look at all the old tech like CRT monitors everywhere in the films, meanwhile prequels like Prometheus have 3D holographic maps aboard their ships. It's just a function of what they were working with and could envision at the time. In 30 years I bet the viewscreens in poo poo like Avatar are going to look super dated.Owlbear Camus posted:Sci fi movies can be short sighted aout just how enduring the corporate titans of the day will be. Giant Atari billboards in Blade Runner, Pan Am flights to the moon in 2001... Wait what? Mister Speaker fucked around with this message at 19:17 on May 14, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 19:14
|
|
|
I'm personally fond of the steady-cams in combat
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 19:15
|
|
|
To be fair they’re meant to make the gun aim itself, and the Colonial Marine Tech Manual even demonstrates how to fire it prone, or over cover. That and it gets a pass via the Rule of Cool, because they look rad as hell. 
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 19:19
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:To be fair they’re meant to make the gun aim itself, and the Colonial Marine Tech Manual even demonstrates how to fire it prone, or over cover. Yeah, the smartguns own. It's not as iconic as the pulse rifles, but they were my favorite in all the FPS games
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 19:22
|
|
|
Class Warcraft posted:I just wanted to go on record to say that retrofuturism owns. Alien Resurrection, of course, manages to gently caress that up (like everything it tries) by picking the lamest possible company to namedrop. i think it was more joss whedon thinking he’s oh so loving funny hey weren’t we all supposed to play avp over the weekend
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 19:27
|
|
|
gary oldmans diary posted:imagine that chart of all the phone company splits and mergers stemming from at&t except its wetland-yutani https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfHfj4j1yEQ&t=57s
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 19:52
|
|
|
Mister Speaker posted:It seems silly to me, to discuss anachronisms like that in film because of course things are going to be that way... just look at all the old tech like CRT monitors everywhere in the films, meanwhile prequels like Prometheus have 3D holographic maps aboard their ships. It's just a function of what they were working with and could envision at the time. In 30 years I bet the viewscreens in poo poo like Avatar are going to look super dated. I saw that as the Nostromo being an old beat-up tugboat, while Prometheus was supposed to be a state-of-the-art ship. Think 1980's Ford F-150 vs. 2019 Range Rover.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 21:35
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:To be fair they’re meant to make the gun aim itself, and the Colonial Marine Tech Manual even demonstrates how to fire it prone, or over cover. Lol I just realized blizzard used the mechanic for Soldier 76
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 23:38
|
|
|
Shut up Meg posted:Not to mention the MG42 WWII machine guns Anybody who has played Brigador knows the MG42 will be around for a LOOONNGGG time, just under different names.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2019 23:56
|
|
|
WatermelonGun posted:i think it was more joss whedon thinking he’s oh so loving funny It's this. I wouldn't look too far beyond it as it's just a lame joke. WatermelonGun posted:hey weren’t we all supposed to play avp over the weekend I'm always down. I think there are 3 of us and someone mentioned that 4 are required maybe? I don't remember. There must be something we can do.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2019 02:19
|
|
|
I just checked and I forgot I made a temp note file and the people who said something are me, Beet Wagon, and Xenomrph. I can add you to the list. That makes 4. If you have an aliens game and want to get this started then speak up. Also I was thinking of soliciting Michael Biehn again but I don't think I can trick him into saying anything about the forums. It'd probably have to be personal and I bet I'd have to use my real name which I don't give a poo poo about. Not sure what I'd get him to say though. It'd have to be directly Aliens related and not some personal "Congrats on your new job" thing.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2019 04:48
|
|
|
I have all the avps and I'm gmt
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2019 10:54
|
|
|
PhotoKirk posted:I saw that as the Nostromo being an old beat-up tugboat, while Prometheus was supposed to be a state-of-the-art ship. Think 1980's Ford F-150 vs. 2019 Range Rover. I hate this handwaving for lovely in-universe continuity.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2019 11:18
|
|
|
I'm down for AvP Classic, if you play it.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2019 14:18
|
|
|
Hey Alien fans, if you haven't ever played Alien Resurrection for the original Playstation, you really should! The game is one of those gems which a whole lot of people never looked at due to a multitude of factors. The game spent time in development hell and released 3 years after the movie it tied into. Said movie was poo poo. All the PS1 players were too busy cumming furiously over the brand new Playstation 2. All the PC players were making GBS threads their pants playing Aliens Versus Predator. So yeah, it really didn't do as well as it deserved to. Which is a real shame as Alien Resurrection is seriously impressive when you consider its a PS1 title released 19 years ago.
As it happens the game natively supported the Playstation Mouse, so I got it in my head to get it running via emulation to basically play it with a mouse and keyboard. Which was brilliant - when it worked. Retroarch kept making GBS threads the bed and I don't have the patience to spend ages tinkering around with that bullshit anymore, so the only solution was to dig out the real deal.  This game is survival horror in FPS clothing. The way the combat and inventory works makes this game feel almost like an early version of what you'd get if you mixed Alien Isolation with Resident Evil 7. There's no actual puzzles, but progress is made by collecting keycards, shutting off forcefields, deactivating security systems and so on. Other methods of progress are more complex, such as searching for detonators to eject a soon to explode lifeboat from the ship. The only music in the game is during the title menu. There is literally no ambient or dynamic music of any kind in the game, outside of combat ambience is provided by the noise of the ship and its systems, and the sounds of distant clashes between whats left of the crew and the xenomorphs, creating an oppressive and lonely atmosphere. The only voice you'll hear through the course of the game is from Father - the ships computer.  It's hard. Another thing that it suffered for critically back in the day is how the game is really quite difficult. Ammo is scarce, xenos do a lot of damage and are difficult to hit, and there are large distances between save points. Fortunately your weapons are very potent and you just need to think about what you're doing and make your shots count. The levels themselves are large and complex, and xenos will try and get the drop on you. The good news is that alien and human enemies will fight each other rather than gunning it for you all the time, so its often advantageous to let both sides slug it out before finishing off the survivors. It has the best facehugging mechanic in any Aliens/AvP game by far. Alien games have varied drastically on how they handle the little fuckers. Alien Trilogy had them hump your face for a few seconds while you lost a small bit of health, but they were only a real threat if you was on the verge of dying. By contrast, AvP, AvP2 and Isolation had them instantly kill you if they were able to jump on your face, making them the single most dangerous enemies you could encounter. AvP 2010 would have you throw the facehugger off provided you was at max health; less than max meant instant death, and in typical Colonial Marines fashion you simply mash a button to repel it making them no real threat whatsoever. In Alien Resurrection, should a facehugger manage to get you, you black out for a few seconds before waking up to a dead facehugger at your feet and a mysterious new health bar slowly counting down. Should this bar empty completely, you are treated to a violent game over sequence as the chestburster emerges. Luckily, scattered around are items called Autodocs that you collect which remove the offending critter. While impregnated, facehuggers will half heartedly jump at you and do minor damage, so should you fall victim to one be sure to hold off using the autodoc as long as possible while you destroy as many facehuggers while they can't hurt you. So the mechanic balances facehuggers really well between being a minor annoyance and terrifying instadeath machines. This is fortunate, because...  There are a LOT of facehuggers. Outside of Alien Trilogy most Alien games used these creatures quite sparingly, and some such as the marine campaign in AvP2 you didn't have to fight them at all if you didn't want to. Alien Resurrection on the other hand not only has lots of them, but eggs will usually open if fired upon. Mercifully where there are eggs/facehuggers there is usually at least one Autodoc around, so if you're careful you shouldn't die from the chestburster. Autodocs can be collected and stored in your inventory like other items.  Xenos are smart. Being a PS1 game there's not exactly going to be some advanced AI in play here, but the game does a good job nonetheless. While Xenos will run straight at you, they'll also come at you from the ceiling and the walls, jump out from around doors and corners, and try and flank you or get behind you. If you have a Playstation or Playstation 2 knocking around and can find a copy, its seriously worth a look. Lastly I leave you with this gem from the review Gamespot did when the game was originally released.  Gamespot posted:Fans of console first-person shooters or the Alien film series will probably be better off waiting for Fox's recently announced Aliens: Colonial Marines for the PlayStation 2. While no concrete details have been announced for the game yet, this is one instance where the unknown is preferable to the devil you know.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 18:35
|
|
|
Fun fact: the Alien Resurrection game was the first console FPS to have dual-stick controls. People at the time complained about the “counter intuitive” control scheme, and now it’s an industry standard.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 18:40
|
|
|
Anyone ever play Aliens: Online? I was a kid when it came out and my parents lol'd right at my face due to the monthly sub.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:03
|
|
|
Glenn Quebec posted:Anyone ever play Aliens: Online? I was a kid when it came out and my parents lol'd right at my face due to the monthly sub. Yeah, I played it a lot. I wasn't any drat good but I played it a lot. If you used the smart gun you were mocked for being a cheater because it was OP as gently caress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW4c2BPqP20
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:11
|
|
|
PhotoKirk posted:I saw that as the Nostromo being an old beat-up tugboat, while Prometheus was supposed to be a state-of-the-art ship. Think 1980's Ford F-150 vs. 2019 Range Rover. This makes sense except for the fact that in Aliens it is mentioned that Gateway Station was built during the 57 years Ripley was in cryo. So canonically it's basically brand new and it looks like total poo poo, with CRT monitors and everything. Yeah, you could say "Well maybe the tech is too expensive to outfit a whole station" or "Maybe they didn't want Gateway to be top of the line" or whatever, but the gulf between the two levels of technology is insane to the point that it really makes you wonder where the stuff that's supposed to be in the middle is. It just doesn't line up and to a certain extent that's okay and you end up breaking the universe more by trying to explain it. Although the idea of some kind of tech-apocalypse between Prometheus and Alien is an interesting idea to play with. Also hell yeah I'm down to play AvP, but I'm mostly only around on weekends. There's a discord link floating around in here that might really help w/ coordinating things.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:14
|
|
|
Vincent Van Goatse posted:Yeah, I played it a lot. I wasn't any drat good but I played it a lot. If you used the smart gun you were mocked for being a cheater because it was OP as gently caress. Game looks rad.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:17
|
|
|
It was a great 90s multiplayer FPS and it's sad that it's almost forgotten these days. If you got full teams on both sides it came close to capturing the feel of the movie.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:20
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:Fun fact: the Alien Resurrection game was the first console FPS to have dual-stick controls. Turok was the first console FPS I played and consequently I play southpaw because the N64 used the stick to look and the yellow c buttons on the right side of the pad to strafe/move as standard. I can't go back. I've tried!
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:23
|
|
|
Beet Wagon posted:This makes sense except for the fact that in Aliens it is mentioned that Gateway Station was built during the 57 years Ripley was in cryo. So canonically it's basically brand new and it looks like total poo poo, with CRT monitors and everything. Yeah, you could say "Well maybe the tech is too expensive to outfit a whole station" or "Maybe they didn't want Gateway to be top of the line" or whatever, but the gulf between the two levels of technology is insane to the point that it really makes you wonder where the stuff that's supposed to be in the middle is. On top of that there's really no indication at how old the Nostromo is to begin with. When you're working industrially, if things are still functional you keep them going until it's too expensive to keep it up. The Nostromo could already be 50 years old by the events of Alien.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:25
|
|
|
For what it’s worth, the Nostromo was built in 2101.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:34
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:For what it’s worth, the Nostromo was built in 2101. All this got me looking at timelines and lol the events of Prometheus happen like a year after Ripley is born. Covenant takes place 16 years before the Nostromo leaves Earth on its last mission. I never knew how close together they apparently were, I always got a "Man's first steps into the stars" vibe from both those movies, which definitely does not jive with the "space travel and colonization is so ubiquitous as to be boring" vibe in Alien and Aliens. I guess it does support the "Maybe the Prometheus was super top of the line" thought process though
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:49
|
|
|
It seems more like it supports the "Prometheus was a dumb, poorly planned, bullshit movie" hypothesis?
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:55
|
|
|
The other explanation is Ridley Scott doesn’t give a gently caress about strict continuity and just wanted to tell his story, even if it contradicted his own earlier story.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 19:57
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:Fun fact: the Alien Resurrection game was the first console FPS to have dual-stick controls. The best thing about the Gamespot review is the Medal of Honor style controls are an available option, if he’d bothered to actually look. It’s like giving a pc game a bad review because you didn’t like the default keybinds instead of just changing them.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 20:00
|
|
|
For a real good time, try playing the Resurrection game nowadays using dual stick controls. The game was designed with the Medal of Honor control scheme in mind, so if you’ve got 15+ years of Halo/Call of Duty under your belt then playing it with dual sticks makes the game trivially easy.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 20:10
|
|
|
purple death ray posted:It seems more like it supports the "Prometheus was a dumb, poorly planned, bullshit movie" hypothesis? Also this. I guess it depends on how you want to spin it. If the Prometheus was literally cutting edge technology it makes sense a corporate tugboat might not have it 8 years later, and might have to rely on old dumb poo poo. On the other hand, if the Prometheus is a top of the line experimental spacecraft sent on some first step into the stars but a couple years later colonies are mundane and space trucking and space marine-ing are common jobs, we must have had one hell of an infrastructure week in between the movies. I will always favor Alien/Aliens over Prometheus, so I'm pretty much always gonna go with the "How did they go from holographic touch screens to CRT monitors, Ridley, you IDIOT" take tbh
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 20:12
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:The other explanation is Ridley Scott doesn’t give a gently caress about strict continuity and just wanted to tell his story, even if it contradicted his own earlier story. As with recent Star Wars films, this is a loving stupid attitude to have. The original incarnation of Alien and Aliens, or the original star wars trilogy are what people actually like, what the film series real core is, what audiences want to see, so when film makers dismiss decades of continuity they make bad films. I wish Ridley Scott left Alien alone because all he could add to it are the lame tropes and trends polluting cinema. When hacks like Damon Lindeloff of Rian Johnson splatter their pretentious, ham fisted, spoiled and sheltered hollywood bitch boy ideas on a film series like so much diarrhea it never fully washes off.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 20:33
|
|
|
Ridley Scott should have left Alien alone and just made a movie about androids loving or whatever it was he wanted to do. I probably would have watched that, and might even have liked it. Also, while I'm at it, I don't want to see a Blomkamp Alien movie. I'm sure it would be really good looking but the guy can kinda only make one movie and I'm done watching it.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 20:37
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:The other explanation is Ridley Scott doesn’t give a gently caress about strict continuity and just wanted to tell his story, even if it contradicted his own earlier story. 
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 20:37
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Tell a new loving story then. Don't piggyback on your old good story to tell your new poo poo one. You can't have it both ways, Ridley Scott! In some ways I don’t think that’s fully Ridley Scott’s fault; he wanted to make an original non-Alien sci-fi/horror story, but the studio knew it would sell better if it was an Alien movie so they could market it as “RIDLEY SCOTT RETURNS TO THE FRANCHISE HE CREATED” (which is exactly how they marketed it, which is a little disrespectful towards the other people that created Alien and made it what it was, but whatever). Ridley Scott still wanted to tell his story and he’s got a big ego, so the studio still let him do what he wanted to a very large degree, and we ended up with Prometheus. There was a lot of backlash about how Prometheus didn’t feel like an Alien movie, and since they were already down the rabbit hole of it being an Alien prequel, the studio pressured Scott into making the sequel into a more Alien-centric movie and Ridley Scott famously said”They want Aliens, I’ll give them loving Aliens,” and the plot about Shaw going to the Engineer world got scrapped and she got killed offscreen, and we got Alien Covenant. So the takeaway is, the studio tried to steer Big Ego Ridley Scott and, uh, welp.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 21:46
|
|
|
This is nice to hear, actually, and reads more of Scott flipping the bird to the studio who will hopefully think twice before they try to commandeer a new idea for mass appeal. Unlikely, but we can always hope. I mean what's Scott got to lose by tanking the Alien franchise? It's not like he's hurting for work or cash so he's in a nice position where if you try and gently caress with him he'll just sabotage the project himself.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 22:35
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:In some ways I don’t think that’s fully Ridley Scott’s fault; he wanted to make an original non-Alien sci-fi/horror story, but the studio knew it would sell better if it was an Alien movie so they could market it as “RIDLEY SCOTT RETURNS TO THE FRANCHISE HE CREATED” (which is exactly how they marketed it, which is a little disrespectful towards the other people that created Alien and made it what it was, but whatever).
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 22:50
|
|
|
Mister Speaker posted:Since we're chatting about The Thing now, here's a really good fanfic written from the creature's perspective. It's absolutely chilling and you should definitely read it if you haven't already. I believe there's a good audio reading of this out there too, I'll see if I can scare up a link if people talk about this more. Also, SNES Alien 3 got a fresh hack recently and thought it might be worth linking. Definitely gonna check out that PS1 game later.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2019 22:56
|
|
|
Watching Aliens right now. 1990 Special Edition.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2019 02:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 21:57 |
|
|
Lord Ludikrous posted:-lots of gushing over Alien Resurrection for PlayStation- 1) Dual-analog felt natural enough as a controller equivalent to what had become the KB/M standard for PC FPS games by then. 2) TimeSplitters had already been out for a while by the time I actually got around to trying Resurrection for myself, and it featured the same dual-analog controls for moving/aiming. I had no problem getting used to that either. How or why GameSpot thought this dual-analog setup was counter-intuitive I don't know!  But god drat if I hadn't been spoiled rotten by other FPS games, even on the PlayStation alone, by the time Resurrection finally escaped development hell and rolled around to release. It wasn't unenjoyable; I actually had some good fun with it and things could get genuinely tense at times, but all I really remember about the map designs in Resurrection boils down to a bunch of dull metallic grey-brown environments, often comprised of bland narrow corridors (which is understandable given the source material, so I can't knock it there) and some absolutely horrible draw distance, even in supposedly well-lit sections. Basically, I don't remember anything specific about any levels because there was often gently caress-all enough to see that would actually leave an impression. I have the same complaint with Alien Trilogy, now that I think about it. Thick dark fog everywhere and samey corridors for miles. The Facehuggers, however, just gently caress those things. Of all the Alien-based games I've played, only Isolation got it right because they're rare, only appearing toward the very end of the game, and nearly everything kills you instantly anyway. Every other time, even in stuff like that old SNES Alien 3 game, they just ended up being tedious and/or frustrating to deal with as things progressed, and Resurrection was no exception to this. On one hand the timer/Autodoc solution is better in this instance than the Facehuggers being the insta-kill mechanic they so often are, but on the other hand they're really unnecessary and dealing with them to prevent you going on an item hunt just slows things down too much, and often ends with you going on that very same loving item hunt anyway. All that being said, I really should give it another go. It's definitely a better way to spend two hours than watching the lovely movie. Edit: RossMan4Life posted:Also, SNES Alien 3 got a fresh hack recently and thought it might be worth linking. Definitely gonna check out that PS1 game later. ZogrimAteMyHamster fucked around with this message at 02:28 on May 17, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 17, 2019 02:24
|
|
